The ladder drops Sally and Devlan into a cavern of steel and ozone. Below the rail yard, massive conduits throb like arteries, all feeding one sealed chamber at the far end.
A wall of monitors flickers on. Blueprints, test logs, and bio-signal graphs scroll past. Every line points back to Sally.
The Scientist
You finally made it. The control spine is down here, and so is the original harvest map.
Devlan keeps his gun up, eyes fixed on the sealed chamber. Inside the glass, a half-lit silhouette shifts behind warning lights.
The Scientist
Mrs. Vale was a manager, not the architect. The people who built you are still using this line, and they are close.
Sally
The graphs are keyed to her body. This place is not just a lab, it is the leash.
A red access lamp snaps on over the chamber door, then unlocks with a heavy metallic clank, as if waiting for Sally to step inside.
“I keep Devlan on the gun and question the silhouette”
SUCCESS (Superb Willpower, rolled -2)
Sally
Who are they? And what is that chamber keeping alive in there?
The Scientist
Whatever is behind that glass, it is not the owner. It is the inventory.
Devlan shifts his stance without lowering the pistol, giving Sally a clear lane while the red lamp washes the steel in a warning glow.
The Scientist
I was here when the spine was wired. They did not build a prison, they built a feeder line.
The Scientist
Sally, your body is the key, but not the only one. If they wake the chamber, the line opens both ways.
The silhouette behind the glass turns at last, just enough to catch the monitors' light. A human outline, still and watching, stays unreadable as the chamber seals hum under pressure.
The Scientist
That voice inside the chamber knows this room better than I do.
“Is the silhouette the vanished scientist?”
YES (Unlikely, rolled 10)
The silhouette shifts, the harsh light catching a familiar, weary face that Sally recognizes from the missing persons files Devlan once showed her.
The Scientist
I am Doctor Aris Thorne, and that is the man you were sent to find, though he is far from the person he was before they brought him here.
Sally
He is the scientist, but he looks like he has been trapped in that glass for years.
“I study the man in the chamber”
SUCCESS (Good Investigation, rolled -1)
Sally studies the chamber with a surgeon's focus. The man inside is gaunt, skin stretched thin over a body kept alive by tubes and a lattice of faintly lit ports. He is not just imprisoned, he is maintained.
Sally
This setup is keeping him breathing.
The glass and the red access lamp throw hard lines across his face, and Sally catches the details the files never held, a scar at the jaw, trembling hands, and eyes that are exhausted but alert.
Doctor Aris Thorne
They did not build this room to hold me, they built it to use me.
A pulse runs through the chamber seals, low and mechanical, as if the lab itself is listening. The monitors beside the glass flicker with feeder-line diagrams, then lock onto Sally's position.
Doctor Aris Thorne
You are seeing it now, yes? The line goes through me, then to you. That is why they kept me hidden.
Sally has the answer she came for. The man in the chamber is Doctor Aris Thorne, and he is alive, captive, and wired into the harvest system like a living relay.
Escape before the lab defenses activate
Quest Complete
Find the vanished scientist
Attribute Upgrade: Perception Great→Superb